EDI: The Power of the Well-Crafted, Well-Taught Lesson
Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI), an approach based on the premise that all children can learn, helps teachers deliver effective lessons that can significantly improve achievement for all learners, including English language learners and students with special needs. This is a book about classroom instruction–delivering effective lessons to students. We're going to present to you what we have discovered about education and what it takes so that students can do it–and not just some students, but all students.
Well-Crafted, Well-Taught Lesson
In this book, we combine educational theory, brain research, and data analysis to present a step-by-step guide for implementing the EDI method in diverse classrooms. Written in an entertaining, easy-to-read style, this resource provides elementary and secondary teachers with concrete strategies, detailed sample lessons, and scenarios that illustrate what EDI techniques look like in the classroom. Components of EDI include:
- Checking for understanding
- Setting lesson objectives
- Activating prior knowledge
- Developing students' skills by explaining, modeling, and demonstrating
- Presenting content
- Using guided practice
John Hollingsworth and Silvia Ybarra present their new book to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell.
Ideal for all content areas and grade levels, Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) shows teachers how to use this highly effective approach to improve instruction and achievement for every student.
Our Research
Although Silvia and I originally started our company to use real data to help students learn more, our
unyielding focus on measuring, monitoring, and improving educational processes is turning into one of the largest educational research projects ever conducted.
At DataWORKS we and our staff of researchers have:
- Disaggregated four million state-level student test results.
- Collected and analyzed over 2 million student assignments to measure alignment to specific state content standards.
- Observed 45,000 teachers, and developed a process called Instructional Calibration. We sit in the back of classrooms to quantify classroom implementation (and sometimes lack of implementation) of 119 specific classroom practices, such as lesson design components, lesson delivery strategies, cognitive strategies, English Learner strategies, time-on-task, and use of higher-order questions.
Effective Instruction
Students learn more and learn faster when the teacher stands up in the front of the room and explicitly teaches the whole class how to do it. This is teacher-centered, direct instruction. We built upon this approach, developing and refining our own specific version of direct instruction, which became Explicit Direct Instruction, an approach that encompasses our goal of improving learning for all students and especially for low-performing students.
Extensive research studies and meta-analysis studies (analysis of multiple research studies) have come to the same conclusion: Teacher-centered direct instruction is more effective and efficient, especially for struggling students.
